Friday, January 24, 2014

"Calligraphy Class" reprise

It's old and vaguely embarrassing, but like a tune from the past, this bit of writing popped up in my mind this morning. It comes from a time when I was hip-deep in the wowsers and lingo of spiritual questing and as such has the effort-plagued intensity of someone not quite sure of his footing yet anxious to show he is sincere and worthy. I never did learn to become a good Zen student or calligrapher, but I did take this

CALLIGRAPHY CLASS

His small, sinuous hand moves, graceful as water over a rock. "Like
this," he says, and smiles as he hands back the brush. I cannot make the
character look like what he has indicated. Impossible. Time after time,
attempt after attempt, sheet of wasted paper after sheet of wasted
paper, try to find in myself that combination of conviction, intention,
balance, energy, attention, whole-heartedness and ease that seem to
invest both his movements and the calligraphic results. At the moment, I
want those qualities; I want to make them mine. "Mine," now there's a
problem.

Across the room, a white-haired woman asks him, the instructor, the thumb-sized Reverend Jomyo Tanaka, "What does this mean?"

"It means 'child,'" I hear him respond.

"It looks like what it means," she says.

What's she talking about? Looking across the expanse of table between
us, I can see the Japanese character she is referring to. To my eye the
figure could as easily mean "Chinese take-out noodles" as "child." Is
she bullshitting in the way of all uncertain novices, trying to find
deep meaning where there is only doubt? Or is she telling some truth and
having some vision that escapes my untutored spirit? I don't know and
don't want to waste time finding out. I am too busy with my own failure
which, in general, I find very enjoyable.

I wet the brush in the shallow stone trough that holds the inky ink. The
liquid is so black and the paper so white that each stroke takes on a
kind of magnified significance: when the bristles hit the paper its
Black and White, seems Right or Wrong with a vengeance. In oriental
calligraphy, as in life, there's no going back. What's done is done.
DONE.

For tonight's two hours there will be a series of characters, but at the
moment I am trying to penetrate and emulate the character "Ho," which
means Dharma, or dharma - Truth or phenomenon. Following the sample that
Jomyo has made for me, I stroke the strokes onto my own paper,
following the order he has dictated by little arrows with numbers. While
in the midst, I have no idea what it all means any more than a tennis
player who is playing worries that this action might be called "tennis"
by others. Just hit the ball, banana face! I swing. Another flop: the
character is not balanced on the sheet; space-empty and space-filled are
out of whack and the strokes are of differing widths and intensities.

"You'll be OK if you just practice for two or three years," Jomyo encourages.

A response barges into my mind uninvited: "I never want to be good at this. It's too beautiful to be 'good' at!"

Which, of course, isn't exactly the truth in one sense. From the
outsider's point of view, to practice is to become proficient, to become
good at, to become expert. Without practice, there is no understanding.
So, if you practice, you get "good" at it. That's the way what's called
calligraphy in the west looks to me. It looks "good." Very neat. And
somehow studied, like an artistically designed typeface on a printing
press.
Very nice. In oriental calligraphy, to the extent that there is an
object at all, the object is to be original. Like a child: the child
begins with emulation and becomes a responsible individual, wholly
capable of doing something that may look imitative but is in fact
entirely personal, creative, spontaneous, and original. Like a lot of
other "artists" these days, I would love to skip over the imitation part
and "express myself" or "be original." I come up with the same dismal
results they have: skipping emulation in hopes of reaching originality
sooner only creates chaos, foolishness, pain, and endless imitation.

At the moment, my imitations are pretty foolish. After eight or ten
classes copying the characters of the "Heart Sutra," one of the central
texts of Zen and other forms of Buddhism, I feel as if I've only begun
to plumb my inabilities. In tonight's first hour, using more than fifty
sheets of paper, I've found one stroke that feels/looks good. It is part
of a character that otherwise looks/feels like shit.

Down the way at my table, the acupuncturist with granny glasses and a gentle disposition asks, "Will the Reverend show this?"

Again I am pulled away. I get irritated with people whose humility
expresses itself by talking pidgin English to foreigners as if those
foreigners might somehow be mollified and descend from imagined heights
to impart their great understanding. I am the more irritated in this
particular instance because I have known the Reverend Jomyo Tanaka for
seven or eight years. His esoteric Shingon Buddhist practices are not
the same as Zen practice, which I follow, but our paths have crossed
from time to time. Not once have I seen him miss a beat in understanding
English. Neither have I seen him pull holy rank on anyone. He isn't
that sort of monk. Very straight and friendly. I realize that I am
irritated with the acupuncturist for exactly the kind of behavior I have
first-hand experience with. I, too, have engaged (and might yet again)
in the kind of verbal kowtowing that raises the "savior" higher by
reducing the self.

Jomyo makes no comment. He borrows the acupuncturist's brush and flows
through a character. I go back to "Ho" and try to flow. Creating in the
process another one for the wastebasket. Another beautiful failure.
Sometimes the beauty of it all just gets to me. Suddenly, on a page
where there is nothing, something appears, etched in incomparable
clarity - WHAM! - and then it's gone, done, over, past. From the scant
number of people in the class - five or six - I know that there are not
many who are magnetized as I am. But I am. I am a sucker for what I find
beautiful. "Rightness" cannot hold a candle to beauty in my book, and
when the brush touches the sheet, that, for me, is somehow beautiful.
Over and over again I get it wrong. Beautiful.

Jomyo makes no mention in his classes of originality or beauty or the
"life practice" that some consider oriental calligraphy to be. He is
very kind.

After circling the room to look at each student's progress and perhaps
offer a hint or two, Jomyo is back with the acupuncturist.

"What does this mean?" the acupuncturist asks, forsaking pidgin English for the moment.

"It means 'one.'"

The acupuncturist takes up the brush and makes his move. My eyes follow.
Before he has finished the stroke, the word is out of my mouth
unbidden:

"No!"

It just pops out. We are all so careful not to say anything negative
about each other's work that my outburst catches me and everyone else
off guard.

"No," I repeat more quietly, "like this."

And without a second thought, I pick up the brush in front of me, dip it
in the ink, and draw it across the page. One simple line.

And it's OK. I look at it and know it. But my audacity clings to my mind
like B.O. To presume to comment. A beginner like me. I shock myself.
But more shocking still is the realization that both the comment and the
example are on target. Jesus! I feel as if I had laid claim to a force I
had previously acknowledged only with homage. It's as if I'd said to
the force, "You're mine!" and the force replied, "You betcha!"

Jomyo comes around the table to my place.

"Good," he says briefly, then removes my example to his own seat where he proceeds to write on it in orange ink.

"What does it say?" I ask.

"It says 1986 and I signed it."

I feel a little silly. A single line across a page and I get approbation
not only from someone who knows "better" but also, and more certainly,
from my self. From a line?! Yup. One second. One line. That's all.
Like all bright openings, all perfections, this one recedes quickly. In
no time I am back to the same old mistakes. "I" am back in the saddle,
getting in my way, wanting to get it all "right."

But like all perfections remembered, this one stands, clear and
undeniable for me, an advertisement for the future. I long to recreate
that past perfection in some new way and yet know simultaneously that
that longing will have me tripping over my feet for a thousand or a
thousand-thousand sheets to come. The central characteristic, perhaps
the only characteristic, of perfection is non-attachment. The artist
speaks of the "muse" and the musician says "I was hot," but in their
hearts there is only mysterious joy: I was present at a beautiful event
and yet it was not "I." One flashing moment of I-not-I and then it's
back to the wastebasket and the getting-it-right and trying. In Zen
there is a saying: "Easy to enter Nirvana, difficult to enter
difference."

But difference is what I'm now faced with. Working on "Sho," birth, new.
Page after page of birth. How is it possible to fail at birth? Fail at
Nirvana? Fail at difference? At birth "I" failed or was missing. Right
now how could it be any different? How could it be the same? You figure
it: inky ink, white white page, moment after moment, flop after flop and
yet, quite entirely,

1 comment:

My name is Adam Fisher. I live in Northampton, Mass., U.S.A. I have a wife and three children. This is my blog and consists of almost-daily postings -- sometimes (older) about the Zen Buddhism I have admired and practiced for something short of 50 years; sometimes about other 'spiritual' matters; and (more recently) about whatever strikes my fancy. Except to the extent that it might help others to consider what sort of fool they might prefer not to be, this blog does not aim to help anyone. Writing is an old and diminishing habit. It's what I do. Once upon a time, I built a zendo/meditation hall in the backyard here and invited people to come. The zendo is still there and my Dharma name is still "Genkaku" ("original realization" or "original understanding") but these days the formality of meditation has drained. Black Moon Zendo is still a good zendo, but I am 77 in 2017 ... creaky and disinclined. I honor those who make courageous journeys, but am hoist by my own observation that "Just because you are indispensable to the universe does not mean the universe needs your help." Best wishes to all. I can be contacted at genkakukigen@aol.com